The Real Cost of Truck Downtime and Reactive Maintenance with Trent Broberg

I continue to say it's not a driver shortage, it's utilization shortage. While they can drive 11 hours a day, the utility on trucks is typically sitting somewhere around seven and a half hours utilized. That is a massively underutilized workforce. Welcome to today's episode of behind the Freight. On today's episode we're joined with Trent Broberg, CEO of Fullbay and former COO of Truck Stop. Trent has spent more than two decades leading logistics, transportation and SaaS, helping companies scale and rethink how the industry operates. At Fullbay, he's now focused on modernizing fleet maintenance, bringing technology and AI into heavy duty repair to help fleets run more efficiently, reduce downtime and ultimately improve profitability. Today we're going to talk about why maintenance is one of the most overlooked drivers of success in trucking. How fleets should be thinking about uptime and where AI is starting to change the game. Welcome to the show, Trent. Yeah, thanks for having me. Todd. John, I've heard so much about you from this guy. Whenever the name Trent Broberg is brought up, you can expect a five minute tangent of how awesome you are for Mr. John. So you guys must go way back. Yeah. So the management training program back in at Swift in 2004, Trent went through class number one. I went through class number two shortly after him. So you thought the classes would have improved with second degrometed, big downgrade? I promise you it was an improvement. But yeah, Trent and I have worked together for I'd say 23 of the 24 years that I've been in this industry. So I've seen Trent go through an entire professional transformation from going through that management training program into marketing, then into FP&A, then the VP of marketing at Swift. Then he went to DB Schenker to learn the German side of the automotive slash logistics world. Been to Truck Stop. Well before Truck Stop was Real Time Freight General manager, Real Time Freight where I was his sales guy at Real Time Freight, then the Truck Stop and now, then Assertus and now here. And I'm back at Truck Stop. So man, I'm trying to think of any appropriate stories about you Trent, but I got to keep this PC. But we have a lot of history and it's a good mentor for me throughout my professional career. So I appreciate everything you've done for me. I appreciate that. Likewise back at you. Maturation to the process of just leadership. Right. And just growing. And John's one of the best in commercial that I know and he continues to be. And, and little known fact is we're the only people that I'm aware of when we had real time freight, we were playing basketball in the office and we got the cops called on us. So that happened one time. And by basketball, it was the ones that stick on the door. The basketball is that thing a fun fact as well. Real quick, I hired a guy to be part of our customer service team. And his first day of work, he wrestled at Arizona State. I knew from, because I wrestled at Arizona State as well, but he was like six years behind me. And I was joking with him, trying to make him feel comfortable on his first day of work. And I told him, put your toe on the line. Joking. The dude, who by the way, is probably £100 more than me, gets out of his chair, picks me up, and literally souffles me. We're on the third floor of this building. The whole place rumbled. Trent runs out of his office. Right when I thought I was the alpha in that office, dude, I got manhandled. And that was cuckolded, dude. It was introduced me. I want to shake that guy's hand. Yeah. Jay Cranford. If you're out there watching, Mr. Cranford. Yeah, just. Just manhandle. That's awesome. So for people that don't know your listeners for the first time, how do you describe what you do in the trucking industry? Full Bay. We help build the software that keeps the trucks running on the road. Full Bay focuses on heavy duty repair. The largest in the space. Did about six and a half billion through the platform last year. We service about 5,000 heavy duty repair shops. So when we're talking about keeping the wheels turning and earning out on the road, our customers are doing that for your customers. Mutual customers here. So great to be here. Yeah. And I know this answer, but for those that are listening and watching, you probably don't know. But what originally back in 2004, really brought you into this industry to start. Yeah, it's actually a funny story. I've done a lot of speaking engagements on stage. And I had a gentleman who actually works for a truck stop today, Paul Malone, who I've also worked with at many companies and for many years and friends of friends. I happened to be next to Jerry Moyes, who was the owner at Swift Transportation at the time. And we got to know each other. And he said, trent, what are you going to do when you graduate? I had been going to Arizona State for my undergrad. And I said, yeah, forks up. And I said, jerry, I don't know. I've been going to Arizona State for four years and he said, why don't you come work for me on Monday? And lo and behold, I showed up in dress clothes on Monday. And unfortunately, or fortunately, good learning curve. He put me out in a truck and I slept in a truck for a week with no toiletries, change of clothes or sleeping bags or pillows or anything like that. The chain smoker, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. Larry Clement. If you're out there watching, I remember you and I appreciate it and it was a good indoctrination to the industry. That's awesome. Yeah, that throwing just get thrown right into the wall. Right into the walls, Yeah. I love that. So you've led across multiple sectors. And so was there a moment that you'd say like in your career that really shaped how you think about operational efficiency or think about the industry? I had a big eye opening experience when I was running trucks at Swift Transportation and then transitioning throughout the career over to truckstop.com and what's always stuck with me is the driver utility. I have a soft place because I started with drivers, I started managing drivers and working with drivers. And the average driving hours of logbook used today versus when I started almost 25 years ago is not materially different. And while they can drive 11 hours a day, the utility on trucks is typically sitting somewhere around seven and a half hours utilized. And that is a massively underutilized workforce. And I continue to say it's not a driver shortage, it's utilization shortage. And there's a lot that goes behind that. But that operating efficiency to get a driver to 7.6 hours of their logbook 8 hours is a massive undertaking, but can provide a lot of great operating efficiencies in businesses. That's something I've seen in my 17 years in the industry running a fleet, running a brokerage. And I got a lot of experience on the maintenance side of things running a fleet. But then there's also the shippers, the receivers, the customers, the contacts, the appointment schedulers. There's so many different things and pressures that are all competing against the driver's time and what they're doing. And so it's just fascinating that there's a lot of opportunities across the board to improve that time and also to balance the fact that all these different players have different motivations and different things. And unfortunately you see that weight trickle down onto the driver and there's so much that they can't control. And so I've always been fascinated by the maintenance and mechanics side of things and how there's certain things you can do to prevent or to minimize that one area that can be another trigger of disrupting that time. Right. Well, if things don't work out for you at Truck stop, Full Bay maintenance side of things ready for you. So I know you guys are shaking and moving over here at Full Bay for sure. There's been an acquisition that was just announced which is huge. If you could tell the audience here who it is you guys acquired and how they're going to really even elevate you guys to an even higher level than what you guys are at today. I've been here for five months. We looked across the landscape of who's doing predictive and preventative maintenance the best. Right. When you think about there's a lot of PM services out there and we'll probably get into that later on and how important PM services are for a fleet and underutilized PM services are. But on the predictive side, there's a lot of characters out there that are saying that you can do predictive maintenance, but the reality is you don't have the data behind it to really execute in a predictive manner. Fullbay is in a unique position where we've got the data, but we didn't have the AI model, the headless solution or the AI modeling to do that. So we looked across the landscape, found a company called Pitstop, founder named Shiva. Built a fantastic solution out there for fleets and predictive maintenance. Like I said, we looked at a lot of the alternatives out there and really landed on there and have been working alongside ever since. So we're already integrated. We'll be launching some integrated products here soon and moving pretty quick and just excited to have Shiva and his team as part of the fullbay family. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, real quick to piggyback on that. So what do you see FullBay evolving into? Let's just say what's your six month to five year strategy with them and what do you see that acquisition actually doing to fullbay? Yeah, there's a lot behind that, but I think from a vision perspective, you've got a very disconnected and Todd, you mentioned this, a very disconnected environment and marketplace out there in the space. So you've got carriers, you have drivers, you have assets, you have fleets, you have the shops, the repairs, you have the shipper side of things. You're very disconnected system been disconnected my entire career. It will continue to be disconnected. There'll be a lot of opportunity for connectivity. But when I look at the vision of fullbay, it's really about pulling and supporting getting the trucks back on the road in various different connected avenues. So the fullbay platform itself, as we think about the vision of pulling in sensor information, pulling in real time data, interpreting the data with our past historical data, leveraging AI models to then push that, understand red, green, yellow on the trucks, you know, green, we're keep going yellow, let's schedule something red, pull it off the road kind of mentality, Very pragmatic, Take that and then with our data sets is understanding who's got availability, who's got the tooling, who's got the knowledge technicians available, how do we schedule that? And most importantly in the space is who's got the parts and what's the lead time on parts so we can get those trucks in and out quicker in the assets. It's not just trucks out there. When you think about off highway, you think about yellow iron and ag. There's just a lot to the space. But if you think about that connective workflow there really helps. Once again, back to that driver. They're not sitting at a motel or just waiting on a truck with no knowledge around when it's going to be ready. Game changer. Absolutely. One of the things that's been evolving in the transportation industry is profit. And there's many trucking companies that don't experience said profit. But from a maintenance perspective, why is fleet maintenance often overlooked as a driver of profitability? And then also like how should carriers think about then the downtime in terms of the real cost to their business? So kind of a two parter. It's a great question because there's a lot of hidden costs behind that and operating activity behind that and operating profits behind that. So a simple way to think about this and the way that I've run fleets and talked to fleets in the past is just think about what your revenue generation per asset is. Right. Not the fleet, but per truck. And each truck is different. Right. That doesn't get into even the profitability. A lot of people are not managing the cost structures per asset. They're usually typically managing the P and L structure at the fleet level, which is really interesting. But understanding which assets are profitable and not, that's important. But just think about the downtime associated to lost revenue. Right. If you're making 800 bucks per day on a truck or more could be 1600 bucks a day per truck and your downtime's three days, it exacerbates the problem that's outside of now you're having it or you having to transload it. Did you have tow cost, tow fees? So it's really about understanding how do we get back upstream instead of a reactive component, which that's kind of all of that is reactive. If you've got a tow, it's likely a reactive position. Right. Versus getting into that PM service, like I mentioned earlier. Right. It's just like we do on our vehicles, changing oils every five or 10,000 miles and just trying to get ahead of things before they happen. So when you think about profitability, it's really getting in, making the investments upstream into the PM services and getting into predictive solutions that can help you avoid the reactive nature down the road. It's pretty basic, but it's not followed holistically. Most fleets are not managing costs and managing that PM service At an asset level. You see a lot of fleets ebb and flow with the market and their, their behaviors. Yeah, sure, it's opportunistic. So fleets, for example, right now, if you've got an open deck, you're looking at opportunities for rates that are pretty high. You know, if you look at truck stops, rate data, flatbed rates are doing pretty well right now. So you're in an opportunistic place. So you're wanting to get those trucks in and out of shops even quicker. Right. And that could be at a cost. Right. But get those trucks in and out, got to get them moving because the opportunity right now to make higher margins is there for a smaller fleet owner operator. What do you think the first step for them and what they should do to put a maintenance strategy together? Well, I think first and foremost, leveraging any type of data collection. It could be an Excel spreadsheet. That's fine. Right. There are plenty of tools out there, Full bay being one of them, but plenty of other tools out there, but you can simply just track your expenses per asset. Right. Just understand what your operating costs are per asset because they're not all created equal. Right. We all know that even within the same brand, there's a lot of bespoke powertrains out there and things that create different P and L structures or ultimately different cost benefit structures for each asset. So that's kind of where I lean first, is just understanding what you got and how you're managing to what you have today. As you can tell, I'm pretty pragmatic with solutions. I think we overthink things frequently and it's that 80% mentality and go. You'll never solve for everything. You'll never solve for all the fringe cases. Get to 80% and start there. What role do you see relationships playing in the maintenance world? And so I think back to when I was running Q Carriers and we created the vision statement essentially to create an enjoyable experience in transportation. And my director of my shop, my maintenance shop said, but their trucks are broken down when they come to me. How is that supposed to be enjoyable? And I said, well, wait a minute. If you ask every one of these drivers a shop or a place, where would they take their truck if it was broken? If they could choose, they'd have one to pick because they were treated fairly, they were respected, the cost was accurate. So it's not comparable to sipping pina coladas on the beach. It's about in the circumstances that I am creating an enjoyable experience. And so I correlate that to the industry and the focus on drivers and treating drivers with respect. How have you seen that kind of evolve or play a role on the maintenance side of things? And whether you've seen people be successful and, or how it's impacted drivers behavior and also that dynamic, I think it's really all around predictability. So transportation and logistics is really around predictability and less around the urgency to get things done. And if you know it's going to take two days to get a truck in and out because we're waiting on parts or we're waiting on some issue within the truck, that's typically okay. Because I know it's when two days have gone and I don't hear back and no news is the worst news. Bad news is better than no news. Bad news sounds better early. Yeah. Bad news sounds better early. And I think that's the starting point at which you create a relationship in repair. I think that is just the predictability because then you can make decisions. Do I now pull a truck? Do I now pull a trailer off the fence? Do I need to go and look at. Now we gotta start thinking about divesting this asset. Or I can make decisions, but when I don't have any data, that's when you're left in peril. So I think that's the primary focus which in everything is communication. Right. Internally, externally, easy to say, Very hard to execute. Pragmatic, but very hard to execute. Yeah. So you've mentioned AI a few different times here throughout the intro and since we've been talking. But I'm curious, what does AI driven maintenance look like? From day one when I joined Fullbay, the idea was we're going to transition this company to be AI first and AI native. We're doing that with our products. Now we have AI products in market just like everybody. We're moving forward on AI development and the fastest way for you all to adopt AI is likely in your back office or in your customer support solutions. So all of that is wrapped in that, John. It's really how do we support our customers with AI, how do we meet them, where they're at, how do we provide them with solutions? That's all pretty clear when you get over into the product or the obey platform side of things. It's really about leveraging 10 years of data leveraging. Like I mentioned, 5,000 shops and six and a half billion dollars in service through the platform last year alone. How do we leverage that to help drive value for our customer? And while it does help directly our shops and workforce, automation and technician efficiencies and serving them the right data at the right time and translation services and things like that to make it just easier. A technician has a very hard job to do, just like drivers, very similar, very hard. And because they're searching for parts, they're trying to write service orders, they're doing things that take them away from revenue generating opportunities. So that's where I go first usually John, is how do we help those technicians in driving revenue generating opportunities? Just like a driver, it's no different. A driver wants to be out on the road, wheels turning and earning. A technician wants to be turning a wrench, maybe not a tire. But it's the same mentality, it's the same thought process from Full Bay that you would have with carriers. Absolutely. What's one thing you think is overhyped right now when it comes to using AI and trucking? I actually don't think anything is overhyped in AI. I think generally speaking, for the last 12 years you had autonomous trucks and that's definitely an AI first kind of mentality. I think we're so far off from that with infrastructure and regulations and things like that that that will continue to be my answer, which has been my answer for probably 10 years. But I don't think that there is a single thing that's overhyped in AI. If you really get into it and you start learning about it, it fundamentally changes who we are and how we do business. Not just at Full Bay generally. And by the way, side note, Trent's 11 year old is using AI and building out programs on computer. I've seen some of it. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. Yeah, so Trent's a big fan of it. It's a great leadership principle and being AI first, those of you that have kids out there that are younger than 11, nine, somewhere in that range, they are AI native. They don't go to Google, they go to chat, they go to Claude first to find answers. It's a completely different thought process. Right. And I know we're all doing that to some extent as well, but they only know that. So think about that in the workforce and when you're hiring younger talent, things like that. What about Metaverse? That overhyped. Yeah. I think we're all going to be like, will we do this? It's always a metal. Yeah. I think there are some like properties sold for 2 million bucks or something on there. Yeah. Right up there with NFTs that didn't go well. But with the AI chat right now, I mean, how do you see AI really driving your business, driving maintenance really over the next three to five years? Yeah, I think the primary is really in the predictive side. It's the reason why we went out there and acquired Pit Stop. And we'll continue to look at other opportunities, whether it be build or buy scenarios to drive predictability. Because if we can keep those trucks on the road, it's when you have a breakdown on the side of the road, something went wrong upstream. Right. Now I get that you'll never be 100% because you have things blowouts and such and unforeseen circumstances on the side of the road. But generally speaking, if you're broken down on the side of the road that could have been prevented upstream. Right. You think about sensor technologies, you think about understanding what those sensors are doing. There's some companies out there that are doing some really neat stuff even at Full Bay and outside of Full Bay that are understanding tire pressure monitoring, that are understanding soot levels, some that we're playing with and understanding what happens with soot levels and the sensors and how do you correlate that to when you need to service trucks and bring them in? So there's a lot I think really that will push heavy into that space. Is there a big on ramp for getting different sensors into the equipment? Are you seeing that be the common, you know, if you buy any pieces of equipment, are they equipped today or is that still a process to reap the benefits of those sensors? Are fleets or drivers still having to start to decide which sensors to even implement or does that play a role in their procurement of certain components of their equipment? Great question. I think once again, going back to the pragmatic nature, you can get an infinite amount of data off of trucks these days. Now it's challenging to some extent to get them off of heavy duty trucks. Right. To repair and things like that. And oftentimes you got to hook it up direct to a diagnostic solution, which there's many out there today. But I take a step back and say, okay, well what's the one thing I can do? And the best place to get that today for just the basics. And once again, that 80% and go is your telematics solution. Telematics. Once the ELD mandate went in and telematics would continue to evolve, you've got major players. There was consolidation that happened. You've got massive integration systems to these. That gets you a great starting point for sensor information and getting to some causation there. Yeah, it's been quite the evolution. So I grew up in produce transportation as a broker hauling freight off the west Coast. And I remember the temp tails that we'd put on the back of the reaver trailers and they'd be this printout of incredibly hard to read little graph that you could see. We went through the same thing at Swift. Yeah. And now you look at today the amount of information in real time data that you can get from that and as you expand into the rest of the equipment, it's been fascinating to watch for sure. Yeah. There's a lot you can glean off of just fundamental basic information. Right. And like I said, most fleets aren't doing anything. So what's the one thing that can get you, you know, step forward in the predictive perspective? Yeah. Lighting round. Ready? Oh, yeah. It's my favorite part. No cheating. If you were to say that any animal could jump behind and start driving one of these trucks around, which animal would be the best driver and why? Heavy Duty Class 8, we'll talk about here. Not race car drivers. An elephant, I think because they've got a memory. They remember the routes, they remember relationships. Take it back into any space possible. Probably. Touche. Right, right. I think that's probably. That's probably a good answer. The elephant jumps to the top of the leaderboard in our series thus far. Yeah. I will say too. I've seen YouTube videos of how protective they are as well, which is another good thing. They're very relationship driven. They take care of their kids when there's. I think there was an earthquake. And they're all surrounding the babies. Just good people. Oh, yeah, finish this sentence. The freight industry will be meaningfully better when we understand that connectivity to help fundamentally, the drivers in the industry is paramount to success. So it's a disconnected space. But I think the more that we can work together to get that driver utility and asset utility up, the more everyone wins. A lot of people have competing priorities and they're within their own walls. I think I know this answer, but I'm actually really curious to ask because maybe I don't, but if you weren't in the SaaS world, logistics technology, what would you be doing? I have a. You probably know this because our kids play. I have a passion for coaching. I love helping people at all ages better themselves and that could be, you know, I have a big passion for physical fitness but it doesn't have to be that sports. I love helping people help themselves get better. Favorite sport to coach currently football right now. Although football's fun. Football. Colin plays for 11 and 9 year olds in football is the most stressful thing I do all week. Yes. Yeah, that beats the stress that full bait puts on me. My son plays lacrosse. He's in eighth grade and just made varsity. So he's varsity part time and JV part time. And so that's like incredible stress watching that advancement into the age group on so many levels. It's hard to try to be very careful with an 8, 9 year old when they think they're as good as Tom Brady, but really they can't even hold a football right. So they're like, let me be quarterback, I can make this right. You're like, well, how about you just. It is no difference leading within an organization than leading kids. And your primary function is to instill confidence in people, to instill confidence in kids and to instill confidence in the team members at Fullbay and at truck stop. That fundamentally is why we're here, to do good work. That's awesome. I thought your answer is going to be some around cars. Trent's a big car guy. Yeah, I do like cars. Working in a shop, honestly, I love turning a wrench on. I like cars with character. Older muscle cars. It's got a couple lifts in his garage today where he's got some toys. He's awesome. Besides you, who's someone in the trucking industry doing great work that people should follow or learn from? Great question. That answer would have never been me. First and foremost, I think there are a lot of folks in this space not naming specifically but that are operators in logistics that are fundamentally changing how we do work from the inside out because they are AI native, they are first. So find the operators within your business or other businesses that are True operators in the business. So they know the business better than I would, better than any of us would. But here at this table that are also literate in how they solve and bridge the gap between that operating and really the technology world today. And I think that is a very unique skill set and a very unique person. And to name some names, I think Scott Mosscript, he's back with Truck Stop. I've worked alongside him for a decade, been friends for a decade and a half or more, and he fundamentally has the same mindset where it's driver first, how do I help the driver? And in turn, that will come back and pay benefits for everybody. I can name a ton of people that have an influence. Jerry Moyce, big influence in me and my career early on and many others throughout my journey. It's been a fun one. That's awesome. Well, first, thank you for letting us use this beautiful studio here. Awesome. Yeah. This is amazing. So we appreciate you letting us camp out here. Appreciate your time sitting down with us. It's been a pleasure for sure. A treat. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Always welcome. You know, our goal, we have mutual customers. Our goal is to help those drivers get back on the road, get what they need. And really, you know, the way that we look at technicians is the same way you look at drivers, is how do we help them do their jobs? How do we help them get the revenue? And by partnering with folks like Truck Stop, we can definitely accomplish that. How do people get ahold of you? If they want to start or learn more about fullbay, fullbay.com that's your best place to go to. Feel free to call us, email us text messages. You've got the omnichannel solutions there. You'll get some AI chat in there, but you can get direct to us as well, for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Trent. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Thanks for being here. Take care. If today's episode helped you think differently about your operation, share it with someone in your network who needs to hear it. And if you're looking for tools to help keep your truck rolling from finding quality loads getting paid quicker, well, truck stop.com is here to help. Go visit truck stop.com to explore the load board rate insights and risk management solutions built specifically for carriers and brokers. Thanks for listening to us at behind the Freight. Until next time, Keep the wheels turning and the bad loads burning.